


Harry Potter and the Better Life

by Sheogorath



Category: Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling
Genre: AR, Gen, No abuse, nice!Dursleys, scheming!Dumbledore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 05:14:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheogorath/pseuds/Sheogorath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if the adult Dursleys were tricked into believing Harry was their own son? How might things have turned out?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Harry Potter and the Better Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shadowNova](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowNova/gifts).



> Uh, yeah, I'm playing with clichés again. I promise to put them back neatly when I'm done, okay?

## Harry Potter and the Better Life.

_Dear Mr. and Mrs. Dursley,_   
_It has come to my attention that a grave injustice was done to you just over sixteen months ago. You see, when your son, Dudley, was born, you also had another child. You may not believe me, but you must trust my word._   
_What happened was this; while you were unconscious after giving birth to your first son, Mrs. Dursley, you gave birth to another little boy, one who had suffered from twin to twin transfusion syndrome and was therefore quite small and hidden behind the bulk of his much larger brother, making it impossible to see him during scans. Once you had given birth to little Harry, as he has been named, the doctors took him away, believing that he would die in just a few days, and you took Dudley home being none the wiser. Days, however, turned into weeks, and young Harry thrived. Since the doctors could not return your youngest son to you for fear of being sued for malpractice, they instead put him up for adoption, his new family giving him his name._   
_Just a few months ago, the hospital burnt down with the loss of many doctors' lives, as I'm sure you remember, and it was as I was giving last rites to one of those doctors that he admitted the guilt of himself and his colleagues, so I set out to find your son that day, locating him just last week. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, his adoptive parents were involved in a fatal car accident yesterday, thus the cut on the boy's forehead, so I plucked him from the wreckage and am returning him to you with his original birth certificate._   
_In closing, I would like to apologise for the shock that this missive must have caused you, and for simply leaving the child on your doorstep._   
_Yours sincerely, Father Septimus Smythe, St. Jerome's Church._

Smiling, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore folded the thin sheet of muggle parchment and put it in the envelope along with the certificate which recorded the birth of one Harry James Dursley on the twenty-second of June in 1980, then licked the flap and sealed it closed. He picked up the basket in which lay Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, and walked to the gates of Hogwarts before apparating with a faint pop.

✱   ✱   ✱

Opening her front door on the morning of the day after All Hallows' Day, Petunia Dursley let out a thin screech of fright as she nearly trod on a _baby_ of all things! A baby lying warmly wrapped in blankets in a basket, with a letter just beside the small body. At Petunia's scream, the baby woke up and immediately burst into wails of hunger and fright, and the woman instinctively picked it up to soothe it, taking the envelope as she did so before returning inside. Her husband, Vernon, could pick up the basket as he left for work later.

Once inside again, Petunia returned to the kitchen to feed her son, Dudley, and the new child, then as she was eating her own breakfast, she opened and read the letter that had been in the basket.

"Vernon, look!" Petunia exclaimed.

"What is it, Pet?" Vernon could do without his wife's hysterics since he was having a hard week at work, so he'd said nothing about the strange child who had suddenly appeared in his kitchen.

"This child is our son!"

"Yeah, right. More like somebody's dumped their kid on us and is saying anything to make us take it in."

"No, really, Vernon. His birth certificate's here and everything!"

At that, Vernon took the papers to read them for himself, then said, "Well, this _is_ a cause for celebration, isn't it? You get the necessary things while I'm at work, then we'll have a welcome home party once I get back. Only us four, mind you. No one else should know about this."

"No, of course not, sweetums," Petunia said, giving her husband a kiss as he got up from the table. "I'll see you this evening, then."

"This afternoon, you mean," Vernon corrected. "I'm going to take a little time off. After all, it's not everyday that your long lost son you never knew you had returns, is it?"

With that, he left the kitchen and went out the front door.

✱   ✱   ✱

During Harry's life with the Dursleys, he never knew about 'Harry hunting', wasn't given chores more suitable for someone twice his age and size, and was never picked on in school or by his neighbours because of an undeserved bad reputation. He also had plenty to eat, with seconds and even thirds to help him catch up in size to his 'big brother'. All this meant that Harry's accidental magic never felt the need to protect him, so it came as a huge shock to the entire family when his Hogwarts letter arrived on the twenty-fourth of July in 1991, a week before his true eleventh birthday, and they realised he wouldn't be attending Smeltings after all.

✱   ✱   ✱

Catching sight of the bespectacled boy with emerald green eyes amongst the first years still waiting to be sorted, Severus Snape sneered slightly. His heart wasn't in it, however, because it was already filled with gladness at seeing Harry looking like a child his age should instead of like a scarecrow in robes. Maybe the brat _was_ spoiled this time around, but at least he didn't seem to have been abused the way he had been the first time.

As Albus Dumbledore watched a faint sneer ghost across his potions professor's face before it faded again, he thought back to that time in September of 1980, when Severus had come to him and not only revealed that Voldemort was targeting young Harry Potter, not quite two months old, but that the Potions Master himself had come back in time after suffering an accident with a time turner, and while he wasn't prepared to reveal anything about the headmaster's own future, he needed to ensure the safety of one of his students. By the time Sirius Black could be located after Voldemort's attack in Godric's Hollow, he had unfortunately already gone after Peter Pettigrew and ended up in a cell in Azkaban, despite Dumbledore's insistence on a trial with veritaserum, so the headmaster of Hogwarts had instead decided to make the adult Dursleys believe that Harry Potter was their own child in an effort to prevent the abuse he had heard about, the adult Dursleys' lies about the deaths of James and Lily Potter providing some inspiration.

Thankfully, the plan seemed to have been successfully pulled off, as the boy in front of him was not as skinny as he had been assured he was in the other timeline, and when Hagrid had been interviewed, he had reported that the boy's clothes seemed to be in good repair and fitted him well enough, most unlike the hugely outsized rags that Severus had spoken of. Yes, all in all, now sitting on the sorting stool was a boy who would probably save the Wizarding World because it was the right thing to do, rather than simply because it provided his escape from a miserable life.

**Author's Note:**

> Copyright © 2013 Romersa's Protégé. Individuals and groups are free to copy and share this work for all purposes except large scale distribution, subject to credit being given and any derivatives being released under the same or a similar licence. All other rights reserved.  
> Published with permission from J.K. Rowling.


End file.
